Joe Connell Murder: The Plot, the Motive, and the Appeal

Joe Connell was murdered on September 22, 2013, by two hired gunmen working for his own business partner, Christopher Rivers, who wanted Connell dead to collect on a nearly $1 million life insurance policy tied to their auto shop’s mortgage. Connell’s wife, Olga, was killed alongside him outside their Wilmington, Delaware condominium. It took investigators almost a year to trace the money and arrest Rivers, and the case eventually sent four men to prison.

What Happened Outside the Paladin Club

Just after 1:28 a.m. on September 22, 2013, New Castle County Police were called to the Paladin Club condominiums on Paladin Drive in Wilmington after neighbors reported shots fired.¹ Joseph and Olga Connell, both 39, had just returned home from celebrating Olga’s birthday. Officers found them in the front yard of 84 Paladin Drive.² More than 20 shots had been fired from two different guns.³

Joe was pronounced dead at the scene. Olga was taken to Wilmington Hospital and pronounced dead there.¹ The couple had been married just over three months, having wed in the Virgin Islands in June.⁴

Why Christopher Rivers Wanted His Partner Dead

Rivers and Connell co-owned C&S Automotive Repair on Concord Pike. In October 2012, they had taken out a mortgage of just under $1 million from Susquehanna Bank for the business. As a condition of that loan, each partner was required to carry a life insurance policy on the other for $977,500. If one partner died, the payout would erase the mortgage. With Joe gone, Rivers stood to own the shop outright.²

Rivers needed that outcome. He owed roughly $140,000 to an employee, Harry Cook, and couldn’t pay it back; the two had verbally agreed Cook would receive part of Rivers’ share of the business instead.⁵ The business itself carried more than $140,000 in outstanding civil judgments, and Dexsta Federal Credit Union had separately sued Rivers for nearly $28,000 in unpaid loans.⁶ According to later reporting, Rivers was also struggling with opioid addiction and stealing from the shop.³

He had briefly considered simply buying Joe out for $25,000. Prosecutors later noted that number was nowhere near the value of the roughly $1 million property the two had bought and renovated together.⁵

How the Plot Worked

Rivers went to his drug dealer, Joshua Bey, and agreed to pay him $60,000 to arrange the killings. Bey recruited two men, Dominique Benson and Aaron Thompson, to pull the triggers.²

Rivers paid Bey a $5,000 down payment before the murders. After the killings, he sent additional installments of $5,000, $2,500, and $1,500, which Bey passed along to Benson and Thompson. It was nowhere near the promised $60,000. Thompson eventually told Bey to warn Rivers he “better get that money together or it’s gonna get serious.” Rivers claimed police had seized $25,000 from him after the murders, money he said was meant for the hit. Thompson didn’t buy it, saying Rivers “never had no money from the jump.”² Those payment disputes, captured in later communications, became key evidence against him.

How a Family Feud Misled Investigators

For months, the case pointed the wrong way. Joe had been locked in a bitter fight with his sister, Kelly Connell, over an engagement ring. According to trial testimony and later reporting, Joe had taken the diamonds from Kelly’s engagement ring, worth roughly $20,000, replaced them with cubic zirconia, and used the real stones in the ring he gave Olga.³ The discovery split the family. Joe had told his brother that if anything ever happened to him, Kelly was responsible.

Rivers used that feud as cover. Before the killings, he paid Bey to stage a break-in at the Connells’ home to steal jewelry, an act designed to focus suspicion on Kelly.³ When the murders happened, detectives initially zeroed in on her. She was cleared after they confirmed she was home recovering from surgery at the time of the shootings.

How the Case Was Solved

With Kelly out of the picture, investigators turned to the money. They traced payments from Rivers to Bey and from Bey to Benson and Thompson, mapping out the financial trail behind the killings. Police arrested Christopher Rivers on September 3, 2014, nearly a year after the murders.²

Rivers went to trial in Delaware Superior Court before Judge Charles E. Butler on April 11, 2016.⁷ Joshua Bey, who had already pleaded guilty in 2014 in exchange for his cooperation, was the state’s central witness. He testified about the drug trade he shared with Rivers and how Rivers had set the murder plot in motion over disputes involving the business bank account.⁸ Rivers’ lawyers argued that Bey was the real killer, not just a middleman.

The jury rejected that theory. On April 29, 2016, they convicted Rivers on all counts: two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, first-degree conspiracy, and first-degree criminal solicitation. On October 7, 2016, Judge Butler sentenced him to two natural life terms plus an additional 50 years.⁹

What Happened to the Other Three Men

Joshua Bey, the middleman, was sentenced on September 6, 2016, to five years in prison and six months of probation for first-degree conspiracy and a probation violation, with the sentence contingent on his continued cooperation and testimony against the co-defendants.⁸

Aaron Thompson, one of the gunmen, was convicted of murder in June 2017 and sentenced to two life terms on October 6, 2017.⁷

Dominique Benson had a rougher path through the system. Tried alongside Rivers in April 2016, he was convicted of conspiracy but the jury hung on the murder and gun counts. A retrial in November 2017 acquitted him of murder. He received five years on the conspiracy conviction.³¹⁰

The Appeal

Rivers appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court on two grounds. He argued the trial should have been moved out of New Castle County because of sensationalized media coverage, and he argued that statements made by his co-conspirators after the killings should not have been admitted, because in his view the conspiracy ended once the murders were done.¹¹

The court rejected both. It found the pretrial coverage informational rather than inflammatory and equally accessible to jurors anywhere in the state. On the hearsay question, it held that in a murder-for-hire case, the conspiracy does not end with the killings; it continues until the hired killers are paid. Because the co-conspirators’ arguments about the unpaid money happened during that ongoing conspiracy, the statements were admissible. The court affirmed Rivers’ conviction on March 20, 2018.¹¹

Rivers is serving his two life sentences plus 50 years in a Delaware prison, with no possibility of parole on the murder counts.

1
WHYY. Two Wilmington Men Arrested for Paladin Club Condo Murders
2
FindLaw. Rivers v. State
3
Oxygen. Christopher Rivers Had Joseph and Olga Connell Murdered
4
Legacy.com. Joseph Connell Obituary
5
Delaware Online. C&S Employee Relays Conversation With Rivers at Paladin Club Trial
6
Delaware Online. Drug Charge for Partner
7
Delaware Online. Dateline NBC: Delaware Murders of Joseph and Olga Connell
8
Delaware Online. Middleman in Paladin Club Murder-for-Hire Killings Sentenced
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Delaware Online. Christopher Rivers Sentenced in Paladin Club Killings
10
NBC Philadelphia. Joseph and Olga Connell Murder-for-Hire: Benson
11
Justia. Rivers v. State, No. 536, 2016